[564]. I can only think of one important blunder that he makes as a historian—the statement that Opitz “took Holland for his Parnassus.” Now Ronsard (v. sup., ii. [362]) was not exactly a Dutchman.
CHAPTER II.
MIL-HUIT-CENT-TRENTE.
[THE ‘GLOBE’]—[CHARLES DE RÉMUSAT, VITET, J. J. AMPÈRE]—[SAINTE-BEUVE: HIS TOPOGRAPHY]— [THE EARLIER ARTICLES]—[3‘PORTRAITS LITTÉRAIRES’ AND ‘PORTRAITS DE FEMMES’]— [THE ‘PORTRAITS CONTEMPORAINS’]—[HE “ARRIVES”]— [PORT-ROYAL], [ITS LITERARY EPISODES]—[ON RACINE]— [‘CHATEAUBRIAND ET SON GROUPE LITTÉRAIRE’]— [FAULTS FOUND WITH IT]—[ITS EXTRAORDINARY MERITS, AND FINAL “DICTA”]— [THE ‘CAUSERIES’ AT LAST]—[THEIR LENGTH, ETC.]— [BRICKS OF THE HOUSE]—[HIS OCCASIONAL POLEMIC]— [THE ‘NOUVEAUX LUNDIS’]—[THE CONCLUSION OF THIS MATTER]— [MICHELET AND QUINET]—[HUGO]—[‘WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE‘]— [‘LITTÉRATURE ET PHILOSOPHIE’]—[THE ‘CROMWELL’ PREFACE, AND THAT TO THE ‘ORIENTALES’]— [CAPITAL POSITION OF THIS LATTER]—[THE “WORK”]— [NISARD: HIS ‘ÆGRI SOMNIA’]—[HIS ‘ESSAIS SUR LE ROMANTISME’]— [THEIR “CULPA MAXIMA”]—[GAUTIER]—[HIS THEORY: “ART FOR ART’S SAKE,” ETC.]— [HIS PRACTICE: ‘LES GROTESQUES’]—[‘HISTOIRE DU ROMANTISME,’ ETC.]— [UBIQUITY OF FELICITY IN HIS CRITICISM]—[SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN]— [PLANCHE]—[WEIGHT OF HIS CRITICISM]—[MAGNIN]—[MÉRIMÉE].
The Globe.
It is well known, even to not very careful students of French literature, that the famous term which has been taken as the title of this chapter is something of a misnomer,—that the still more famous “representation of Hernani” was in effect the shouting after the battle, not the battle itself. The pains which have been spent above on the Empire Critics, greater and smaller, must have been most ill-bestowed if they have not shown that the working of the world-spirit had done already much of what had to be done—that the i's only had to be dotted and the t's crossed, by the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century. The crossing and dotting was done, as usual, with some violence, and it attracted corresponding attention; but the letters had been shaped long before. Dubois and Pierre Leroux had founded the famous Globe—object of the admiration of Goethe and cradle of the talent of Sainte-Beuve and others—in 1824. It furnishes comfort and support to those who believe that criticism is nothing if not philosophical, by the very strong philosophical colour which it took on. Jouffroy was one of its chief pillars; and attention has often been drawn to his tractate in it, Comment les dogmes finissent (as to which it can only be remarked that no dogma has ever died yet, and that every dogma, as a natural product of something in human nature, is immortal till human nature perishes), as a symptom and symbol of its literary as of its other doctrines. Charles de Rémusat, Vitet, J. J. Ampère. We are here, however, only concerned with its strictly (if not merely) literary contributors, Sainte-Beuve himself, Charles de Rémusat, J. J. Ampère, Vitet, and the rest. Of Sainte-Beuve we shall have plenty to say presently; the rest need not delay us long. The extraordinarily brilliant talents of Charles de Rémusat[[565]] were always touching literature: but philosophy and politics constantly drew him away from the Muses proper, though whether he talks of Abelard or of Anselm, of Bacon or of Channing, he is never negligible. Vitet became a politician and an antiquary chiefly, but has left at least one remarkable literary document in his well-known essay on the Chanson de Roland.[[566]] As for J. J. Ampère, he supplemented and furthered the study of foreign literatures, which Villemain had made almost obligatory, by an unusual frequentation of foreign countries; and besides some excellent work on the literary history (especially in mediæval times) of his own language, wrote many books of literary travel.
On the whole, however (for Sainte-Beuve grew out of and far above his Globe stage), the general interest of the reviewing in this paper is superior to that of its component parts as criticisms and its individual authors as critics. Those who now read Goethe’s remarks on it to Eckermann[[567]] may, if they neglect the historic estimate, be a little puzzled at the great German’s enthusiasm. He was right, however, as, in a general way, he usually was. These young men took literature with a wider knowledge and purview of it than the old critics had brought to bear, and with very much less subservience to particular theory as to what the book ought to be, and a more obliging though quite independent attention to what it was. Their “eclecticism” (which was philosophically the tone or ticket of their paper) adapted itself especially well to these literary exercitations: indeed Eclecticism is never so well justified of any of her necessarily mixed family as in literature. But their greatest is their greatest by so far, that we may well turn to him.
Sainte-Beuve: his topography.
Sainte-Beuve was not infrequently seized with an amiable and very convenient fancy for constructing small retrospective guides and clues to the mighty maze of his fifty or sixty volumes of critical essays. The most definite and important, written in September 1861, just at the beginning of the Nouveaux Lundis, and appended to the second volume of the Garnier edition of Portraits Littéraires, distributes his whole career under heads. First comes his novitiate in the Globe up to 1827; then the Romantic campaign of the Ronsard, the Tableau du Seizième Siècle, and the articles of 1828-29; then the nearly twenty years’ stretch of his contributions (preserved in the Portraits Littéraires themselves and the Portraits Contemporains) to the Revue des Deux Mondes, with Port-Royal as a solid cut-and-come-again accompaniment; then Chateaubriand et son Groupe; then the Causeries du Lundi properly so called, and, lastly, the series which he was beginning as he wrote. The work of the first period of which he speaks with some disdain—ce ne sont que des essais sans importance—he never actually republished; but towards the end of his life he repented and intended to do so, and such part of it as could be recovered appeared posthumously, with a good many waifs and strays of other kinds, as Premiers Lundis. If to these we add the Étude sur Virgile[[568]] and perhaps the P. J. Proudhon,[[569]] we shall nearly have exhausted his available stores, and quite, I think, those of critical interest.[[570]]